


Housewarming

by Davis (Ihasa)



Series: The Haunted City [1]
Category: Original Work, The Haunted City
Genre: Body Horror, Horror, Monster - Freeform, frank discussions about being eaten, not sure how to tag this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:41:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27183983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ihasa/pseuds/Davis
Summary: Spencer helps Ariel with a problem with his new place. It goes as well as you might think.
Series: The Haunted City [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1984283
Kudos: 2





	Housewarming

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning for vomiting, seizures, quite a lot of peril, a little self-harm, and drinking something you probably shouldn't.

Every home or space Ariel Park had ever lived in had been haunted. The house he was born in (a home birth, in a plastic wading pool, his mother had insisted) had tried to smother him in his crib. The one after had killed the first of many family dogs. After that came the twin poltergeists, then the troll in the cellar, then the bones under the cupboard, and it had never stopped. Every house he had grown up in, every dorm he stayed in, every apartment and studio he had rented since. Every single one had been inhabited by some sort of slack-jawed, drooling, ectoplasmic freeloader with a grudge against anything with a pulse. Every. Single. One.

And, he thought as he listened to Spencer vomit again into the kitchen sink, this one was no different.

“All those puh-people...” sobbed Spencer between the heaves. Ariel shuffled the pages of his newspaper, carefully laying it down on the stack of boxes by the couch he had only just managed to get against the wall the hour before. The boxes had been arranged into a sort of makeshift desk to hold his laptop and his morning cup of coffee, though the instant Spencer had walked in the door with that Look Ariel had switched to whiskey in the first cup he could find. 

Ariel Park was a big man, over six and a half feet tall. He was also fat, Asian, and never wearing anything that wasn’t a suit. He fiddled with a few keys on the laptop and tucked a pair of fashionably fragile earbuds into his ears. Taylor Swift was appropriately energetic for this early in the morning, he thought as he unfolded the newspaper again. He had already managed to circle a few interesting prospects for a new place. He heard Spencer throw up again. Ariel silently turned up the volume.

  
  
  


Eventually, a shadow passed over the newspaper and Ariel looked up. Spencer was feeding several sticks of bright green gum into her mouth. Her eyes were wet.

Spencer was short and thin, black, with a half-shaved mop of bleached natural hair and a pound of eyeliner applied to each dark eye. The makeup did nothing to hide the deep circles under Spencer's eyes, the dry skin and the hollow, challenging stare. Ariel didn't like to imagine what it was like inside Spencer's head, hearing the voices Spencer liked to keep quiet about. He didn't like to imagine what it felt like to feel people's souls through his skin like Spencer did, eliciting the need for the approximately nine layers of clothing Spencer always wore, including a battered pair of knitted gloves. When they had met, Ariel had been mildly surprised to learn that the tiny ball of clothing was a woman; though Spencer herself was the first to admit she didn’t really ascribe to any binary. She was a little younger than him and most of his associates, supernatural or otherwise, and she was his best friend in the world.

“What is it this time?” Ariel asked her. He took out his earbuds.

“It's like ten in the morning, you ass,” she muttered wearily, grabbing the plastic cup of whiskey off of his box-desk. He watched her trudge back into the kitchen. A moment later she came back into what he had been planning to turn into the living room and sat down on the couch with her head between her knees.

“You're a bastard.” She said. He folded his paper and set it aside. There wasn't a lot of point in arguing with that. “It's... a lot. Just, a lot.”

“A lot of people or-”

“A lot of everything.” Spencer sat up and leaned on the arm of the couch, rubbing her forehead with her thumbs. After a moment she shrugged. “It's not that bad, though. Not really.”

She continued:

“Something bad happened here. Something big. It's an old goddamn building, I'm not that surprised.” She shrugged again and looked off into the stacks of boxes with an absent, thousand mile stare. “You've got roaches, too. In the kitchen.”

Ariel stared at her and licked his teeth. His tongue clicked at the back of his throat.

“Well,” he said eventually, “I'm sure whoever lives here next will love the place.”

“No, you can't move. Not again.”

“Like hell I can't.” He snatched the paper up. “Look, there's a place on Hamilton-”

“Hamilton's a  _ hole _ , the rats alone would eat you alive. And no one's going to rent to you if you keep breaking your leases.”

“There's hotels.”

“Suicides,” she said, storm clouds gathering in her voice. “And worse,  _ prom night _ .”

Ariel groaned and settled deeper into the couch. It was a comfortable couch, only a few years old, all smooth lines and something that looked almost nothing like the suede that had been advertised. He had hated, as he always hated, watching the movers carry it up the stairs. The cushion was bolted to a polished wooden frame, prone to denting and scarring and impossible to fix, and movers were never as gentle with your things as you wanted them to be. It had already been the third time that year he had had to move. Moving now would be the fourth time in less than eight months. He caught his finger in a fresh pit in the wood and rubbed at it.

“What should I do?” He asked hopelessly, staring at the ceiling. There were black flecks in the paint, as though a large water stain had been painted over recently. His was not the top apartment, he remembered vacantly.

“You could… talk to her,” said Spencer.

Ariel jerked upright.

“What?”

“It’s not that bad.”

“ _ What? _ ”

“You just,” Spencer stammered angrily, “You just talk to them! Just talk to them! It isn't hard!”

He gaped at her.

“It isn't-”

“I'll go with you – look, it's  _ not that bad _ . It's a-a-a, you know, a woman, a pretty girl in a white dress. She's in pain, she's trapped here. She showed me what he did to her. It wasn't just her, but she's the only one here. I can feel it. It's just a woman. You can talk to a woman.”

“You want me to live with a ghost.”

“Ariel-”

“I'm fucked.”

“Oh come on...”

“No, I'm fucked! I'm completely fucking fucked, and that's all there is to it.” His head went 'plompf' against the couch cushion. “Can I have my drink back now?”

“I poured it out.”

Ariel moaned theatrically.

“You're a terrible person.” He said. “And I hate you.”

“I know,” she said.

They were quiet for a long moment. He stared up at the stained ceiling, listening to the buzzing silence all around them. Through the tinny whirr of nothing in his ears he could hear her chewing her gum thoughtfully, snapping tiny bubbles between her teeth. He waited for her to say something, and finally she said:

“It's not even the apartment. It's the building. You just tell her you're not a threat. That you're cool.”

“They  _ always  _ try to kill me,” he said, as though he were describing that it always rained on his birthday.

“I'll go with you,” she said, as though she were holding a child's hand at the dentist. He let his head fall to the side and looked at her.

“What if you throw up on me?”

“I won’t throw up on you.”

“Yes, but what if you do?”

She looked at him through her fingers, a tight smile shifting the angles of her face, grinding them against each other like tectonic plates. Ariel sighed. He glanced back up at the water spots, then back to her.

“Okay, let's go talk to the dead,” he said.

* * *

Spencer was a Medium, Ariel thought as he locked his apartment, or at least, that was what people called her. Neither one of them thought that got the nuance across. Spencer had tried to explain it to him on more than one occasion when she got in the mood to do so, usually with a lot of swearing and random acts of violence against small delicate objects in her immediate vicinity. How much of it he actually understood was almost entirely dependent on how drunk he was, but as far as he could work it out it was a little something like this: Spencer was at a large party she hadn't meant to go to. She didn't know anyone there, and no matter what she did, she could not leave. Every other guest at this party, assuming she was there on purpose, took it upon themselves to corner her against a wall and tell her some intimate detail of their lives, as much of their life story as they could before she managed to make an excuse and slip away to another corner. Through all of this, she had to maintain the illusion of belonging, act like nothing was wrong, and try to have a good time. And in spite of any efforts she might make, sometimes someone realized she didn't belong there and punched her right in the face.

Every time she touched someone, or even certain objects, she felt their strongest memories, lived their most brutal emotions, as though those thoughts and feelings crept out through their pores, slithering out of their meatbag bodies and rolling across the city like a thick, clinging perfume of agony and ecstasy. The dead didn't have the benefit of bodies to hold their memories, instead speaking directly to her regardless of touch. They oozed around her. They invaded her mind, brushing and butting into her like wounded, blind fish. She couldn't turn it off. She couldn't leave the party.

Ariel had touched her once, skin to skin. It had been an accident. It had been a nightmare. 

* * *

Spencer said she had felt something on the ground level, so they headed down. The basement access wasn't at the bottom of the stairs, probably to discourage residents from entering on a whim, which Ariel supposed was exactly what he and Spencer were doing. Instead, the cream-colored door was across the lobby. The lobby had seen kinder days, perhaps back in the Seventies when the now faded burnt pumpkin and chocolate color palette was more chic. The tile floor was scarred and scuffed by decades of shuffling feet, the wooden paneled walls pitted by the hands of stumbling drunks and uncaring kids alike. The lobby was largely bare, just a long wide corridor of empty floor leading up to the wooden door and the mailboxes. The door had four tiny, frosted windows, barely letting in any of the bright morning sunlight. There was a matronly woman standing by the bay of mailboxes amidst a pack of small children, and a pair of red-eyed teenaged boys skulking along the opposite wall. Ariel grumbled under his breath, avoiding their gaze. He didn't want to do this, never mind that he had agreed less than five minutes ago, he was allowed to change his mind. He didn't want to go through yet another monster trying to kill him. Not even the kindest little child ghost liked him. He wasn't being a pessimist, it was just fact – he tried to go about his business, ghosts and monsters and whatever else tried to kill him. It was science, and trying to go against it was like teaching a dog to critique Russian literature. 

Ariel was a consultant, and spent a lot of time at work making models and devising strategies for other people’s businesses. He was good at it, desired for it, and so he felt he was pretty qualified to tell anyone who asked what was going to happen in the next ten or so minutes. In the best case scenario, they both wound up dead and bloody right when they got down there. At worst, they both wound up dead, bloody and alone sometime within the next three days. No, he thought, reevaluating. At  _ worst _ they did that whole 'die and then go insane' thing. No, wait, he could think of worse things... Meanwhile Spencer walked like a tank, her elbows out and her curls bobbing like a pale yellow flame, not acknowledging anyone but silently daring them to so much as look at her. By the time Ariel had figured out what the worst thing that could happen  _ actually _ was, they were at the door to the basement. He held it open for Spencer and slipped in behind her, feeling that at least if he was going to die, he was going to die being  _ right _ , which had to count for something. He barely managed to avoid her when she stopped just on the top of the stairs and leaned against the wall. She gagged quietly, covering her mouth with her hands as she sank, shaking, towards the floor.

“You said you weren't going to throw up!” he whispered. He let the door fall shut behind them.

“I'm not throwing up.” Her voice was shaking, rough with nausea.

“You look like you’re going to throw up.”

“I am not going to-” her voice cut out in a wet choke as she suddenly gagged, her back heaving. After an agonizing second she swallowed hard.

“You just threw up in your mouth.”

“Shut up,” she hissed. She scraped her tongue on the roof of her mouth and cursed softly. Ariel looked away. Down the flight of stairs was another door, set below the one they had come through, and beyond that would be the basement, and whatever thing was going bump in the night. Except it was, he checked his watch, ten-thirty in the morning. Whatever thing was going bump in the morning.

“She keeps showing me what he did to her.” Spencer murmured. “My head's getting fuzzy, she's just screaming and screaming and screaming and-”

Spencer dug her fingernails into her temples and gritted her teeth, a strangled angry scream caught in her throat. Ariel put his hands in his pockets and considered how much easier his life would be if the door at the bottom of the stairs were locked.

“Fuck –  _ oranges –  _ ” Spencer hissed, choking like her tongue was swollen. She suddenly threw her arms out, grabbed the metal railing and fell down onto the stairs. Ariel jumped gracelessly out of her way, teetering on the step beneath her while she put her face in the crook of her elbow and leaned on the wall. He put his hands back in his pockets and waited for the seizure to pass, examining the chipped white paint on the walls and railings. There were black flecks on the paint in the corners. More mold, perhaps? 

The first time Spencer had had a seizure in front of him he had tried to grab her when she fell, he remembered as he waited for her to come to. She had lashed out at him, managed to open-palm smack him on the mouth before she lost consciousness, and when she came out of it a minute later she had explained – or yelled, more accurately – that when her sixth sense was overwhelmed it shut her down, rolling over her brain like a brownout. All there was to do was wait for her to come to, and hope it didn't get worse. Without meaning to, he counted the seconds in his head. Ten, twenty, thirty... Spencer smacked her tongue and made a sound of disgust.

“Why is it always oranges? I  _ hate _ oranges.”

“Are you back?”

“Yeah.” She got back to her feet and swallowed, wiping her mouth on the back of her glove. “It's bad down there. It's really bad. We've got to do this.”

“You're not usually so... generous,” Ariel said, finally voicing what he had been thinking since her initial suggestion of ‘talking it out’. And then, feeling less kind, he said: 

“I've never known you to be such a bleeding heart.”

“You don't have her screaming in your head,” gulped Spencer, her voice edged. “I've gotta do something.”

Ariel swallowed his protest and gestured for Spencer to go first, following slowly behind her as she stumbled down the stairs with both hands on the railing. She had never had much of an interest in helping the dead before now. She communicated with them when she had to, occasionally offered a suggestion in Ariel’s efforts to live comfortably without being attacked, but she was usually much more tentative about dealing with them directly. He hoped this new Spencer was a phase. He hoped she wouldn't turn into one of those television mediums, wearing airy fabrics and looking coyly at the camera. He watched her take another slow, deliberate step. Maybe it was just to occupy his hand, maybe seeing her struggle made him afraid of falling, but he put his hand on the railing, as though he could save up some spare safety for what was ahead.

“And someone fucked in this stairwell,” she growled. Ariel took his hand off of the railing.

At the bottom of the stairs was another door, this one painted white. The handle had been painted over some dozens of times, distorting the edges and leaving it like a tumor, a swollen lump on the door. Ariel reached past her to open it, telling himself one last time that even if Spencer wasn't right, maybe this was better than moving. At least he could say that he had tried when it inevitably ended in tears. That would be good, something of a moral-

The knob clicked. Ariel blinked at it, jiggling it again. It clicked. It didn't turn. Ariel looked at Spencer, trying to hide the sudden burst of totally misplaced elation that exploded inside his chest. He tried not to smile. He failed at not smiling.

“Well, the important thing is we tried.” He said, barely restraining his voice. Spencer glared at him, her face shiny with sweat. If she were anyone else Ariel would have thought she was ready to hit him.

“You're an ass.” She said, pushing past him and grabbing the knob. “We're doing this.”

“Be reasonable, it's... “ he trailed off. The knob didn't click. It turned, and as though it moved only for her the door opened. Crammed into the lock was a wad of gum the size of Ariel's thumb, black and gooey and stretching in a long wet arc between the doorjamb and the latch. He watched it, his jaw slack, as the door slowly swung open and the gum stretched, thinned out to a filthy thread, and finally snapped. The end stuck wetly to the door. Ariel gagged. Spencer flashed a proud grin up at him, but her lips were thin and drawn. The corner of her eye was twitching.

Ariel slipped his hand along the wall inside the door, finally finding a light switch and illuminating the dark room. The basement lay before them like a damp, cold mouth. The ceiling was a sickly off-white, every rafter and beam coated with a thick layer of foamy insulation, and from it grew a forest of old gray pipes, crisscrossing the room in every direction. There was an old blocky furnace, and beyond it Ariel could see a water heater or a boiler hulking in the gloom of the basement. There were narrow windows along the top of the walls, one or two on his left side. They were painted over with a thin layer of black paint, blocking the light. The right wall jutted in, and there was a door on it, probably leading off to a maintenance closet. In the center of the floor was a huge black stain, a smudge on the concrete floor.

“That's asbestos,” he said, pointing upwards at the fluffy beams. “Are you sure I can't move?” 

But Spencer was already ahead of him, walking away from him into the cool dark room. He followed her in. The door closed gently behind him, too heavy to stay open without a prop. Spencer took off her gloves and stuffed them in her coat pocket. Her steps were even and measured, her feet carefully silent against the concrete floor. She held both of her arms out, her fingers spread as though she were tasting the air with them.

“I hear you,” she said quietly. Her voice was thick, as though she were going to be sick again. She swallowed audibly before she continued. “I'm here. Show me where you are. I'm coming.”

Spencer swallowed again, then coughed.

“Definitely a woman. White dress. Pretty.” She cleared her throat and addressed the invisible specter. “I hear you. I'm here. Talk to me. Tell me what to do.” 

She stopped in the middle of the floor. Ariel watched her, waiting for something to come out of the pipes at him. Her coat hung off her thin arms like a sagging skin. The bare bulb in the ceiling flickered.

“Wait,” said Spencer. She coughed again. Her arms bent slightly. “Wait, what? Why-” 

The bulb in the ceiling flickered one last time and silently died, and just as suddenly Spencer choked, her words dragging into a horrible strangled string of consonants, g's and k's and the bright bubbling sound of liquid on teeth. Her shoulders jerked, her arms pulled in, her hands clawed at her throat. She tried to turn and run, but her legs were already buckling underneath her. Her body turned as she fell, her eyes bulging and staring. Something black and thick was spattered around her lips, a dark and shining oil slick of something foreign spilling in chunks out of her mouth. She looked right at him, and just before her gaze went blank he saw the terror burning bright in her eyes. The black stain on the floor shivered, and when she hit the ground with a meaty thud it jerked into motion like a trap closing. Thin and winding tendrils sprung to life at its edges, a thousand thin vines to grab her legs and arms, to grow up her cheeks and into her mouth, her nose, her ears. They spiraled around her eyelids, they twisted into her hair and down under the collars of her many shirts. Her limbs jerked wildly, her body seizing even as the black mass dragged her down, pulling her into the bubbling floor as if it were made of nothing but sea foam.

Ariel just stared, his mouth open and his chest tight, his eyes searching for the trick as though this were all a dream or a hallucination. He heard a strangled, panicked half-scream, a choked sound that never left his throat. His back hit the wall, his hand hit the doorknob, scrambling for an escape. He had been right, all along, they always tried to kill him, he knew that, she knew that, there was never a good ending, he should have seen this coming, and now and now and now – and now it had Spencer.

_ And now it had Spencer _ roared across his mind, a shrill voiceless scream of knowledge, and with a terrified flailing leap he threw himself away from the wall and into the room. His feet slipped on the cement, his dress shoes barely gaining traction on the slick flooring. His knees hit the ground beside the black pit, his hands up and ready but too panicked to do anything. Spencer was nearly gone, already eaten by the thing in the floor. Her limbs were already below the surface, her nose and eyes submerged. The tendrils were pulling her down by her mouth, pulling roughly on the skin of her pale lips. They were wrapped around her neck, cutting into her skin. Ariel could hear himself whimpering, jibbering to himself, and without thinking he plunged both hands into the blackness around her.

He screamed and yanked them back. They were steaming, blistered, stained red by the unimaginable cold. Rivulets of black ichor ran down his fingers like oil, hanging in thin, gooey strings down into the mass in the floor. Ariel looked at them, at his hands, at Spencer slowly sinking into the floor away from him, and he heard himself make a strained, powerless little animal sound again. Holding his useless, stinging hands to his chest he watched helplessly as Spencer's face was dragged under. Her chest was the last to go, her sternum still floating above the surface like an island of cloth. Something strained under Spencer's sweatshirt, and for a horrible instant Ariel thought the black thing in the floor was inside her, digging its tendrils into her like roots, filling her with holes as it dragged her down into itself, and then in the dark he heard the soft jingle of a chain.

Clarity returned, the icy jangle of metal ringing in his head like the peal of a bell. The fear didn't drain out of him so much as explode, filling his lungs and his arms with a frigid burn, setting his blistered fingers to searching his pockets and his eyes to watching, unblinking, as Spencer's necklace kept her afloat. He had given her that necklace, silver and salt in a little amulet to keep the gentlest of the voices away, a charm, a bauble, a back alley nothing he had kept in his junk drawer. The kindest, sweetest trick he owned, because a man who spent his whole life haunted didn't live unprotected, and a man who spent his whole life looking over his shoulder didn't leave home without something to scare the monsters back under the beds with. In a second his hands found his keyring, the new keys only attached this morning, and with quick shake to separate key from keychain he had what he needed.

It was a simple charm - most of what he kept and carried was - just a little thing to protect him for a few seconds. It was small, easy to carry, and only needed a quick phrase to activate. It was also a pink and green dyed rabbit's foot, but dignity didn't come easy to the kind of person who sold magical items by the gross. He had been allowed to set his own phrase, a kind of personal passcode that brought the thing to life. Ariel had chosen three words in Czech, like a dog trainer who taught his charges to heel in German, more out of security than a desire to show off his second language. The last thing he needed was to accidentally activate a spell in public, or worse, have someone else do it intentionally. 

But what it was and how it worked wasn't entirely relevant. All that mattered was the words rushing out of him, controlled and enunciated just right, and then that his blistered, shaking thumb was ready and strong enough to snap the last claw on the rabbit's foot. The synesthesia of magic overtook him, a bass wave of green crunchiness throbbing in his chest, a dripping half-moon of screaming amber as the charm discharged and the energy passed through him. His skin crackled, the hairs on his arms and his neck stood on end and shuddered, vibrated like they were trying to pull out of his flesh, and like a tide rolling in a pale blue light ran over him, covering him in a soap-bubble shimmer of nothing and sealing tight. To him, all the sound in the room abruptly died, as though he had put in earplugs. He was deafened by the sound of his own breathing. He could hear his heart beating in his ears. He knew he only had a few seconds before it wore off, a quick shield to give him time to cut and run when trouble started, and so once again he dug his hands into the black mass in the floor. He could feel the texture of it, like winding folds of flesh, like a nest of thin, wet worms. Even through the shield it was cold, nipping at his fingernails and the palms of his hands. His hands passed through it, thin tendrils parting and slipping through his fingers like sand as he dug through the mass for Spencer. She was in deep, her back bent and her legs out of reach, but he found her shoulders where they ought to have been and sank his fingers into her coat, closing his hands into fists locked with desperate strength.

The mass in the floor hissed and bubbled with something Ariel assumed was rage. Thin wet tendrils shot out at him, striking hard at his hands and face like whips. They were strong, stronger than Ariel knew he was in the center of his soft, out of shape self, but where they touched him they recoiled, steaming and hissing. They bounced off the shield spell, tapping at it as though it burned to touch him, and their strength only served to pull Spencer further out of their bulk. She came free with a wet, hollow sound, a squelching pop as though she were a boot coming unstuck from mud. Her limbs were twitching uncontrollably, but as her head finally broke the surface the black mass around her face bubbled and burst, her gasping breath breaking through the thick sheet of filth. She coughed, gagged, and as he pulled her against him with a damp squelch she vomited down his back. He locked his arms around her, dragging her feet out of the muck as the little fingers of darkness grabbed and tugged at the two of them. With one final yank he snapped the tendrils, stomping at the roots of the thing as it fought to take Spencer back.

She twitched in his arms, her limbs jerking hard against him. The ichor on her mouth bubbled, fresh darkness spilling over her lips as he pulled her away. Ariel's skin crawled, an irrational part of him desperate to put her down. It wasn't disgust – it wasn’t the monster or the vomiting that set his skin to crawling. He had trained himself since the night they had met, conditioned himself to never so much as tap her on the shoulder. He never touched her. He wasn't  _ supposed _ to touch her, and as he looked around for a direction to run he heard himself apologizing to her, over and over and over again.

The door was back across the room, a thin band of light visible at its base. Ariel adjusted his grip on Spencer, catching her around her waist and lifting her flailing feet above the ground. He was grateful she was so small, but not for her thousand layers of clothing. Every step he took she threatened to shiver and twitch herself right out of her coat and onto the floor, her layers shifting and sliding around her as though she were a tremendous cooked onion. The stain on the floor was alive with tentacles, and worse, the whole mass was moving. It slid along the floor, a shadow that crawled closer to him, pulled along by its thousands of tiny legs. Clinging to her and still half-panicked he turned to bolt for the door, but like a wave the darkness was over his head, a wall of squirming tendrils lashing out towards the ceiling. A spider's web of shining, writhing tentacles tightened ahead of him, and when he turned away it dropped back like water, whisked around him and rose again, fast as a striking snake. It reached for Spencer, grabbing the snaps on her coat, the curls of her hair, and Ariel jerked her back, counting on the burn of his shield spell to keep the beast at bay. But time was running out, his few moments of invulnerability slipping away like the sand in an hourglass. The sound was coming back, the companionable whine of tinnitus fading in favor of the rustling sound the creature made when it moved, the scraping of its tendrils on the concrete as it rasped towards him. He was cornered, backing away towards the back wall, and he knew in a moment he was dead. All he had done was keep Spencer from being devoured for a few extra seconds.

The doorknob smacked him in the hip and he reeled, convinced it was the creature shoring up behind him. Instead, set into the wall was the door he had assumed was a maintenance closet, the knob shining dully in the glimmering half-light of his spell. Without thinking he abandoned all hopes for the stairwell and shifted Spencer, grabbed the knob and threw open the door. He nearly threw Spencer, too, running into the tiny room beyond. Through his weakening spell he heard the thing hiss behind him, but didn't turn, not yet. There was another window here, facing the narrow back alley behind the building. A shaft of dim, indirect sunlight landed in a hazy rectangle on the floor, the true brightness of morning blocked by the building next door. The walls were lined with metal shelves. There was barely space for him to lie her down on the floor in the closet, but he put Spencer gently down on the concrete. He glanced back at the beast and found it waiting, testing the wood of the door frame, licking the latch and the cracks in the wood, but it didn't enter the room. It hung back, as though something in the closet held it there. Spencer's tiny frame spilled over the edges of the pool of sunlight, her jerking sneakers and arms thumping weakly against the floor. Ariel stripped off his jacket and folded it under her head. He turned her onto her side, watching the monster warily. It was the sunlight keeping it out, it had to be, but the light would only last so long, and Ariel needed assurance that they were safe. He glanced around, desperate to find something to help them, but the shelves were nearly bare. His spell was flickering, the glow burning out. There was no time left for subtlety or for finesse, but with an undignified crow of triumph his gaze fell on a yellow plastic bag of water softening salt. It was the oldest trick in the book, the first and simplest spell for any white witch to learn: a circle of salt to protect you.

Ariel was in absolutely no way a white witch, but he tore open the resealable teeth of the bag, spraying fat chunks of salt across the closet floor. The beast was impatiently clamoring at the door frame, covering the doorway, climbing up onto the walls, reaching in with a shy, slow tendrils as though he wouldn't see it if it moved slowly. It grabbed Spencer's skinny ankles, turning and winding its tendrils to keep itself out of the light as it dragged her back. Ariel grabbed her lapel and threw a handful of salt at the monster, sending it hissing back away from the door as he pulled her into the light and went back to the circle. There wasn't much salt left, barely enough to fence in the floorspace of the closet. The beast rustled like a pile of dead leaves, angry, impatient and hungry. It rolled back on itself, tensing to spring, willing to brave the light and the magic in one desperate strike. But as it lunged for them that final time Ariel finished the rough oval of protection and watched, only flinching a little, as the monster bounced off the invisible wall of magic. The line of salt shivered, grains skidding away on impact, but for now the wall held.

“HA!” He yelled, dropping the empty bag. Silently the monster settled back just outside the doorway, its tentacles slipping back into it until it appeared as nothing more than a black crescent-shaped stain on the floor. It could wait. Ariel watched it until it faded, caught his breath and willed his heart to slow down. Even under calmer eyes, there wasn't much to the maintenance closet. A few bottles and jugs of cleaning supplies, a flashlight, a mostly empty box of rubber gloves, and a handful or two of gray rags were all he could see on the shelves. The floor was equally empty, except for a yellowed plastic cooler sitting in the corner. Ariel picked it up over the line of salt and opened it, not sure what he was expecting to find. Inside was an inch of dirty water and a warm, 24 ounce can of Colt 45. He brushed the water off of the can, put the cooler down inside the circle, and turned his attention back to Spencer.

She had stopped twitching once the circle had closed, her seizure apparently passing as soon as the creature was cut off from her. Ariel took a glove out of the box and put it on, wincing when it dragged over his blistered skin. Spencer's pulse was normal, but her breathing was ragged and bubbling. She rattled, and he settled her onto her side again. She coughed, spitting more of the dark mass from her throat. Carefully, fighting himself every time he had told himself not to touch her, Ariel stuck his gloved fingers inside her mouth and cleared away what he could. Inside the circle the ichor was fading, the color draining out as it lost its focus. Ariel scooped a fingerfull of the now translucent goop off of Spencer's forehead, rolling it between his fingertips, stretching it between them. It was ectoplasm, the remnants of a spiritual creature entering the physical world. In an hour or two it would burn off like a fog, leaving nothing behind but the memories. He looked back out at the stain on the floor. Everywhere it had touched her, all that matter it left on her was nothing more than clear glop inside the circle. If he had caught part of it inside the circle, would it have been equally harmless? If the salt kept the area 'clean', could it not manifest inside it? If he had been thinking more clearly, could he have trapped the monster inside the circle instead? Did it matter, now that he was out of salt? He wiped Spencer's face with a rag, clearing the substance from her nose and eyes. Spencer coughed again, retching quietly. Her breathing was starting to settle.

“You'll be all right,” he said dully, sitting down on the cooler. He wasn't sure why he said it, if he was trying to assure her or himself. He took out his phone, grunted disapprovingly and stuffed it back in his pocket with his keys. He carefully stripped the used glove off of his wounded hand and set it aside, then loosened his tie, opened the can of Colt 45, and started drinking.

A few ounces of malt liquor later Spencer was resting comfortably, blissfully unconscious after her seizure. The beast was still outside the door, waiting for the light to fade. It appeared to be a perfectly innocuous stain on the floor once more. Ariel was watching it, checking his watch every few seconds to time Spencer's post-seizure nap. He was trying very hard not to think about what would happen if she stayed unconscious. The window above his head was the only one in the basement uncovered by what he had assumed was paint, the only way for light to reach this basement. He remembered the black flecks on his ceiling, like mold. He hadn't noticed them before Spencer had come into his apartment. And then the flecks in the paint in the stairwell, the black thing he had assumed was gum in the door. The way the door had opened for her and not for him. How Spencer had wanted to save the ghost, and at the bottom of it all the lady in white, a shining cliché in the center of the trap. Ariel shook his head.

“Stupid ass,” he said. “You're fucked.” He sighed and watched Spencer for a moment. Sometimes he wondered if he should have felt something for her at some point, some secretive feelings for the woman he had known for so long. Should he have looked at Spencer's thin face and seen some sort of unexpected beauty, at least once? Being a hot-blooded heterosexual male last time he'd checked in with himself, shouldn't he have always, in some way, have had feelings for her? More pertinently, should he be having some feelings for her now, when they were most certainly, absolutely fucked? He wondered, if this was the end of this life, if he should be having some tender feelings for her now. As though it would give his death more meaning to fall in love, or to see the woman who had been right in front of him all along. But there was nothing in his heart for Spencer that hadn't always been there, friendship certainly, but not something so trivial and childish as love in the darkest hour.

And while he was on the subject of meaning, shouldn't he be making peace with some sort of god? In truth Ariel was as Jewish as he was Korean, really only by accident of parentage rather than by choice or by faith. He sighed and bitterly drowned his stuttering attempts at prayer in another swig of the Colt. There was no meaning to this. Even if, at the end of his life, he really wanted there to be.

  
  
  


Spencer groaned softly, startling Ariel into coughing hard on his approximately twelfth ounce of Colt 45. By the time he had recovered she was weakly wiping at her face and staring mutely at the thick strings of ectoplasm on her palm. She stayed rooted to the floor, though by choice or affliction he wasn't sure.

“Back with us?” he choked, his eyes watering. He blinked the tears out of his eyes and glanced at his watch – she had been passed out for about ten minutes.

In lieu of response, Spencer groaned again, this time with a sort of questioning upturn at the end.

“We're in the basement. In a closet. Do you remember coming down here?” He spoke slowly, in as comforting a tone as he could muster. He set the can down between his feet and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. 

“Mmmyeah,” she said eventually. Her voice was rough, as though she still had ectoplasm caught in her throat. She coughed weakly and wiped her hand on the concrete.

“You've had a seizure. Do you feel alright?”

Even lying on the floor and covered in ectoplasm Spencer managed to fix him with a cold, disbelieving stare. Ariel frowned and tried again.

“Do you feel like anything's broken?” Spencer took a few seconds to wiggle her fingers and make circles with her feet before going limp again.

“Nno,” she slurred. Ariel sucked on his teeth, glancing back out at the stain on the floor. It wasn't moving.

“I think it made you want to come down here,” he said slowly. “Do you think you could do me a favor?”

She coughed again, spitting ectoplasm with a disgusted glare.

“Spencer? I think it was in your head for a little while, there. Can you do something for me?”

“Yyyeah, okay.”

“Can you tell me something I know you know?”

“The last time Jolene dumped you, you ate an entire carton of ice cream and we watched The Notebook back to back all night.”

Ariel felt his temperature rise. He cleared his throat, muttered a vague 'glad you're alright', picked the can back up and took a swig.

“I had another seizure?” Asked Spencer after a moment.

“Yeah.”

“Did I throw up?”

“Yes.”

“On you?”

“No,” he lied.

“That's good.” Spencer shakily sat up, picking gingerly at the soiled front of her sweatshirt. It was wet with ectoplasm and vomit. She sneered at it.

“Gross,” she muttered, wiping her mouth on her hand. She took off her coat, then her dirty sweatshirt. Underneath was a navy blue pullover, and Ariel could see the collar of at least one more shirt under that. Spencer's necklace, a tiny vial of salt and silver filings, laid on her chest. She rubbed the back of her neck where the chain had cut into her skin. Ariel drank his Colt. Spencer put her coat back on and zipped it up to her neck, losing her skinny body in the yards of thick, army green canvas.

“So, what is it?” She asked, gazing out at the dark stain. 

“It,” said Ariel, “Is an angler fish. It put out a bright, shiny sob story, and we came running straight into its jaws.” 

He shook his head. Spencer made a soft, disgusted noise and said:

“I needed to be down here. From the second I came into the building, it was there. She was there. Calling me. Screaming. Showing me what he did to her.” Spencer drew her knees up to her chest, peering over them at the space between them with her dark, dead-eyed stare.

“And then all of a sudden she just... it was like when you pick up the phone and don't realize it's a recording at first. And I don't remember anything after that.”

“It tried to eat you.”

“I gathered that, thanks,” she muttered into her knees. “An angler fish. She was the bait. There is no 'he'.”

“Yeah.” 

“Shit.” She butted her forehead onto her knees. “How'd you get me out?”

“Your necklace. Rabbit's foot.” He held up the spent token with two fingers, jangling his keys. Spencer looked up and immediately grimaced.

“Fuck, Ariel, your  _ hand _ ...”

“It's nothing,” he said quickly, putting his hand down with a weak and dishonest smile. “It's like a sunburn.” In truth it was agony, but the Colt was helping. Or at least he told himself it was helping. He had considered pouring the alcohol over his hand as an antiseptic, but quickly decided it was more useful inside him than on his skin.

“You got another rabbit's foot?”

“No. Last claw, too. I was saving it.”

“Any bottlecaps?”

“Still in a box upstairs. The 'kitchen' one I think?”

“Spoons?”

“Also in the kitchen box.”

“Paper cranes?”

“...Bedroom box?”

Spencer bit her lip and thought for a second.

“Hrunting?” She grunted questioningly, squinting at him with the last shreds of her hope balanced precariously in her gaze. He laughed. He didn't mean to.

“Do I  _ look _ like I carried a broadsword down here?”

“Shit,” she spat suddenly, all pretense of calm gone in a second. “What  _ do _ we have?”

“Nothing,” he said wretchedly, taking another swig of the Colt. “An entire arsenal at my fingertips and I left it all upstairs. We're fucked, like I said.”

“ _ Ariel _ .”

He looked up at her, a twist of anger writhing in his stomach. They were fucked, what more could she possibly want? What insane plan did she want to execute with the scraps in the closet? Wasn't it better to be graceful about this sort of thing? Wasn't it better to accept death? 

They glared at each other for about half a second before Ariel gave up. He wished the can of Colt had been something hard enough to actually get him drunk. That was all he wanted, at the end of his life. A good hard drink of something to kill his nerve endings before he was shredded to pieces. It wasn't too much to ask, was it? He sighed and looked around, pointing at everything he had inventoried earlier as he bitterly listed them off.

“Window: too small for either of us to climb through. Rubber gloves, flashlight, cooler, water, rags, cleaning liquids: none of which are immediately useful.”

“Phone?”

“Dead.” He took it out and passed it to her, just to show her what had led him to stuffing it away earlier. Ectoplasm oozed from every crack and seam in the plastic. It had burst the screen. Spencer swore again.

“It killed all the lights, too. It's not coming in because of this.” He tapped his foot on the floor, scuffing his heel along the edge of the sunbeam. It had already moved an inch or two since they'd come into the closet. “So, as I see it, when the sun goes down it's going to start moving in again, and the salt won’t hold forever. But until then, we wait for death. And drink. Oh, right. Lastly, we have about... half of a can of Colt 45.”

He took another long gulp of the Colt and hefted the can again.

“Make that about a third of a can.”

“I can't believe you're drinking that.”

“If it's good enough for Lando it's good enough for me.”

“Gimme that,” she said, sliding over to sit next to the cooler. He handed her the can.

“Don't pour this one out.”

Spencer lifted the can in a toast.

“We,” she said, “Are completely fucking  _ fucked _ .”

And with that she took a long, warm, syrupy gulp of the Colt. It was stuffy and hot in the closet, even with only the dim rectangle of light shining on them. Ariel gingerly unbuttoned and rolled up his wet, gummy sleeves. The rolls of fabric squelched with ectoplasm from when he had reached into the pit, thick globs of the stuff seeping between his fingers as he pushed his sleeves up past his elbows. It stung in his blisters, a quiet twinge like an itch he couldn't scratch, more frustrating than painful. He flicked strings of the compound onto the cinder block wall under the window.

“You know, it didn't even notice me at first.” He said idly. “Didn't even let me open the door.”

Spencer looked up at him without raising her head, the can still held by her mouth. Across the closet a little flicker of light shone, reflected off of the shiny aluminum can. It was a guarded look, a hard wall of distrust. Ariel pretended not to notice and kept talking.

“I think it eats people like you. Didn't want a damn thing to do with me until I stole you back, magic or not.”

“So?” Spencer passed him back the can of Colt 45. The little flash of light winked across the opposite wall.

“So, it uses a classic Woman in White as its lure. It got into your head to show you the lure, and to make you want to come down here. Right through your defenses without either of us noticing anything was wrong. It gave you what you wanted, what a lot of mediums want. Someone to save.”

“I've never tried to save a ghost in my life.”

“But it made you want to. And it seemed natural that you would, because of what you are, and what that means for most people like you.  _ I _ didn’t even realize it was happening.”

“What are you getting at?” She asked. Ariel passed the can of Colt back over to her.

“It's evolved, or adapted, to hunt mediums. Using the tools we associate with being a medium against them, to catch and kill them. It's not an unfamiliar idea, I mean, there are all sorts of things that eat psychics, but this one is perfectly made. Designed just for the task. If it puts out its lure far enough, it could get any medium or psychic in the city down here, given enough time and assuming anyone more altruistic than you would be sucked right in.”

Spencer drank the Colt with a sullen little sigh. Her eyes were glued to the opposite wall.

“I think it's nice,” continued Ariel, now mostly just talking to himself to hear the sound. “To be killed by something designed for killing. Like being eaten by a shark or an alligator. Same design over millions of years, never changing. It's comforting.”

“You said we have a flashlight?”

He reached over his head and pulled the flashlight down from the shelf, passing it over. It, too, was wet with ectoplasm, ruined and broken. Spencer swore at it, slapping the head and examining the tiny bulb inside for defects.

“It's nice. Like, it makes sense. We're made to be killed, it's made to kill us.”

“Me.”

“It's going to kill me too, Spencer. Don't be selfish.”

Spencer opened the flashlight up, dumping the batteries onto the floor and looking down into the shaft.

“Whole thing's gunked up.”

“See, this is what I mean. Targeting and interrupting circuits, killing electric lights. It's even adapted to hunt in an age when we've made our own, better sources of light. It's perfect. We're fucked.”

Spencer had taken the flashlight apart and laid the parts out in a line in front of her feet. All of them appeared to be in working order, to the untrained eye. She glared at them, picking up one at a time and wiping at them with her sleeve. She scrubbed at the shiny silver dome, the bulb, but the ectoplasm multiplied, grew back like a weed even as she wiped it off. Frustrated, she laid them back out in front of her, breathing slowly as though she were fighting for calm. She picked up the thin plastic cover and looked at it. The little circle of plastic was the only part of the flashlight that was even remotely clean, being that it was totally useless to the workings of the flashlight. She rubbed at it with her hands, clearing away the residue, the thin film of ectoplasm that spread over it like ice crystals over the surface of a pond. A bright little fairy-flash of light skittered across the floor, light reflected through the grimy disc.

“It's not much of a comfort, but, you know. It's important to look on the bright side.” Ariel took the can of Colt back from the floor at Spencer's feet. She seemed to have forgotten about it anyway, he assumed she didn't care if he finished it. He took a long pull from the can, trying to savor what was left of it while simultaneously drinking it fast enough to give him a little buzz. It made sense that Spencer was having a hard time with this, he regretted getting mad at her earlier. Having things trying to kill her wasn't as usual for her as it was for him. She'd never made peace with the idea of dying violently in a basement.

Some people found Ariel depressing. He had no idea why.

He closed his eyes and tipped the can back, downing the last blessed three or so ounces of Colt 45 in one long blissful chug. With every swallow he wished that somehow hope and dreams would turn malt liquor into something a little stronger, but the universe did not provide. So much for working every time, he thought, though it occurred to him that Billy Dee probably hadn't meant it that way. Beside him, he heard Spencer chuckle softly, and a sound somewhat like someone slogging through a pile of dry leaves, or sand falling softly in an hourglass. 

“Hey, look,” she said. Ariel didn't look up. He swallowed the last of the Colt, licked the last drop off the lip of the can, and slumped forward, relaxing into a comfortable slouch. He sighed heavily and regarded the can with a long, heavy-lidded look. Not so much as a tingle.

“I don't think 'e  _ likes _ it,” sang Spencer, cartoonish glee dripping from every word. “Seriously, check this-”

She was drowned out by the sound, a hissing, slithering whine. Ariel jerked upright. The thing in the floor was rising like a wave, tendrils surging out of the main mass and splitting at the edge of the rectangle of light. They ran over the walls, up and around towards the back of the closet even as Ariel leapt to his feet, spinning as the thin wet vines sank into the spaces between the bricks, ran like water through the cracks, always rushing towards the back wall of the closet.

“What did you do?!” He yelled, glaring down at Spencer. She held up the plastic disc. A bright, perfectly round circle of light skittered across the floor beneath it.

“I pissed it off.” She said, eyes darting between his face and the back wall.

“Why would you  _ do _ that?”

“What are you so pissed for? I thought you wanted it to eat you!”

“Angry things chew slowly!” He hissed. Two twin rivers of black ichor wound up and around the cinderblock walls of the closet, one on either side of them. They ran in gently curving paths, lone tendrils hanging off like the tiny feet on clinging vines, tributaries to the larger bodies of wet whispering darkness. The searching ends were tip-toeing over the windowsill, hissing and burning as they sacrificed themselves for the will of the main body. The mass crept over the window, and on the floor the rectangle of light shivered and shrank.

“What's it doing?” Spencer asked, crowding with him into the center of the rapidly narrowing band of light.

“Killing us faster. If it can get rid of the light it can start trying to get through the salt.”

Spencer swore, a violent spitted curse that shook her shoulders. One of her wet curls sprang out of place like a broken piece of machinery. And then she said 'okay', in a tone like she was just irritated enough, like the thing in the floor had been sort of naughty, and now its father had come home. She rounded on the metal shelving unit behind her, scanning the shelves with her fists balled. Half a second later she made a little 'ah' noise and got onto her knees, reaching back into the shelf with her whole body and pulling out a jug the size of her torso. At the bottom was about a quarter of an inch of amber liquid, sloshing innocently around in its plastic container.

“D'you know what this is?”

“Pine Sol?” said Ariel dumbly, reading the label.

“D'you know what Pine Sol mostly is?”

He fumbled for a second.

“...Pretty?”

“ _ Pine oil _ .” Spencer grinned and popped the cap off, splashing the spot on the floor with a thin coating of the cleaner. The thing in the floor didn't take much heed of it, but behind them the weak sunlight was losing the battle for the window. Spencer emptied the jug onto it, throwing blobs of industrial strength mopping fluid as well as she could from within the circle. Spare tendrils were edging against the salt circle, hissing and spitting as the protection pushed them back. But still it reached for her, hungry and no longer satisfied with waiting. Spencer threw the jug at it when she was done, and in the next second she was digging in her pockets, spilling handfuls of ectoplasm studded with pocket change as she searched around. Finally, deep in the recesses of her coat, she found a little metal gadget, two thin metal rods latched together. A quick movement of her wrist and the rods fell apart from each other, the little gadget transforming with one stylish flick into a thin three-inch blade, a wicked little butterfly knife. She grabbed a few rags from the shelf behind his back, knelt down, and started nicking their edges and tearing them into strips with her hands. Ariel watched her, not sure what, if anything, he should be doing. By the time she was grabbing the batteries from beside his shoes the creature had overtaken almost half of the window. Their little patch of light was almost dead, and at the edges of the circle of salt the monster was testing every grain of their barrier, seeking out the weakest places.

Spencer sat with her legs crossed, the batteries in front of her. Ariel saw a glint of silver in her hands, the foil and paper wrapper from one of the sticks of her chewing gum. She was tearing it into a strip, nipping a little notch into the middle of it with her fingernails. Ariel realized she had been chewing gum when they came down here. He realized she must have swallowed it when she first gagged in the stairwell, when he had asked if she’d thrown up in her mouth. He choked down his bolt of nausea. At his feet Spencer was applying the strip of foil to a battery. A thin ribbon of smoke rose from the ripped part of the strip. 

“You were a troubled child,” he said.

“No, I was a Scout,” she said, glancing up at him with another toothy grin. “Weren't you ever a Scout?”

“My mother didn't approve of their stance on homosexuality,” he said dully. “We didn't even buy the popcorn.”

The foil ignited, the paper bursting into a tiny flame, tearing the strip in half as it consumed the paper. Spencer put each burning half on top of her pile of rags, bent down and blew gently on them. She shielded the infant flame with her hands, fingers held tightly together.

“It’s not gonna burn for long,” she said. “But if it hates light, well… Maybe we can get to the door.”

“And if we can’t?”

“Then at least we tried. Sort of like a, you know…”

“Moral victory, right.”

Their eyes met, one long lingering look as the light faded behind them. Ariel wondered if she was thinking the same thing he had been earlier. He wondered if she was reaching the same, loveless conclusion. And then he realized that she was expecting him to say something, to argue or whine or sit back down. But contrary to his defeatist approach to supernatural encounters, Ariel wasn’t actually suicidal. He had no interest in dying if he could help it. The animal urge to survive burned strong, even in him, and though he was afraid to run out into the open, he was more afraid of sitting inside the circle and waiting for death to hurry up and get it over with. He might have made peace with dying in a basement, but he certainly didn’t  _ want _ to. He looked down at Spencer, fanning and adjusting the rags, getting a tongue of flame on each of them, protecting them from going out on the cold concrete floor. He looked at the window, then back to her. She looked back up at him. He shrugged.

“What the hell,” he said, and Spencer smiled. He caught only the barest flicker of surprise behind her grin.

Spencer picked up a few of the rags, careful to grab them along their unburnt edges. Fat, bright flames lapped up the length of the strips, yellow as butter and billowing black smoke. She looked at him one more time, grinned like a cat, and lobbed a handful of rags out over the line of salt. 

The reaction was as instantaneous and violent as throwing sodium in water. The arms that had encircled the room yanked back as though they had been struck, their tendrils bouncing off of the shelves and the invisible wall of salt with a startlingly loud hiss. The thing in the floor did not hiss or growl or grumble like before, instead it shrieked, bucking away from the flames like a wave of beetles. It rattled and roared like waves, like sticks in a concrete mixer, like dice in a cup as it flailed away, spattering the walls and floor with black slime as it sloshed across the floor away from the closet. Spencer grabbed another handful of rags, throwing them closer to the doorway, blocking it from coming back. The last bunch was already falling apart, the thin ragged threads burning too fast to pick up, and so she kicked them into a burning arc, throwing sparks in a brilliant rainbow of red and orange. They scattered wide to the left, nowhere near where Ariel assumed she might have been aiming, but it didn't matter. It started in little pops and blips, little lights coming on and spreading as the oil ignited across the floor. It didn't catch all at once, didn't spread in a wide bright sheet like he'd imagined an oil fire spreading, but all across the splashes and puddles of Pine Sol, wherever the fires touched them, little green and blue flames sprouted and grew. They ate up the oil, spreading fast but almost imperceptibly, giving off only the barest of light in the dark basement. But it was enough. The creature retreated, screaming like a dog caught in a woodchipper in fear and what Ariel hoped to hell was pain.

“Grab some salt and come on!” Spencer was already gone, leaping over the little fires as she ran across the room. Her limbs flailed like they were boneless, her sleeves and the folds of her coat flapping as she clattered across the floor. Ariel scooped up a handful of salt and chased after her, dragged behind her as though he were on a leash. He could feel the heat of the burning oil – hotter than the anemic light would have him believe – on the insides of his ankles as he stumbled behind her, his heart pounding in his throat. The thing was screaming, the sound bounding around the basement like a living thing. Ariel couldn't tell from the sound if it was moving, if it was getting closer or running away to hide. His skin was alive with terror. He could feel every hair on his neck shivering. Suddenly, irrationally, in spite of what he had only just been thinking, he wished that he was still in the closet, as though in comparison to this waiting for death might actually not have been that bad.

Spencer grabbed the doorknob like the handle of a sword. It jerked, it shuddered, but as though someone were on the other side it wouldn't open. Ariel glanced behind them. The mass was moving, screaming, rolling like waves behind the dim wall of fire. It was afraid, too afraid to brave the flames, but like the wall of salt Ariel knew the fire couldn't last. Behind him Spencer had both feet up on the wall, her body curled sideways as she pulled on the doorknob. She hauled on the door, yelling curses strong enough to kill small plant life, and little by little the door pulled away from the frame. The substance Ariel had earlier assumed was gum hung in thick blobs, dripping like drool in the gap. Spencer shifted, digging the tips of her sneakers into the gap, and even as the black mass started to creep over her feet she called for salt. 

Ariel flinched. He had almost forgotten he had the handful. He tore his eyes away from the monster raging in the dark on the other end of the room and stared at her, bent double and defying all sense, clinging to the door like a spider. The muscles in her neck stood out like steel bars. Her fingers were tight, the knuckles pale. Her eyes were squeezed shut with the effort of pulling the door open even an inch. She called for salt again. Even her voice was strained.

He shouldered in beside her, half-throwing the handful of salt at the gummy mess. He ground it in, mashing the grains into the hissing web. It burned away, big gaping holes forming as it sizzled and popped like scorched meat. It smelled vaguely like burned onions. Spencer put her back into it, her feet slipping as the door opened inch by painful inch, and dropping to his knees under her Ariel grabbed the door to help. The substance crept over his hands and the edge of the door, clumsy groping globs of the stuff dripping into sizzling chunks on the floor as it tried to escape the salt. It dug under his fingernails, popped a blister in the pad of his thumb. Ariel could see it was blind, stupid, only connected to the greater mind of the mass still screaming on the other side of the room by the most fragile of bonds. A remote part of it, set like a line of code to keep the door held. Similar to the flecks that had appeared on his ceiling, a group of eyes set to watch its prey from relative safety, or the 'paint' on the windows that he now knew to be a part of the beast. It was perfect, he thought again, dark and ancient and beautiful as a shark. What primordial shadow had it spawned from? How long had it survived? 

And then, a new, strange thought: how long had he been whispering 'we're dead' over and over to himself?

“Go!” He heard Spencer cry, her body a tiny bridge between the wall and the door. She was shaking, her shoulder pressed into the corner. A hard band of light poured past her, a trapezoid of brilliant safety just beyond the door. The space was tiny, but he wasn't thinking. He obeyed her and clamored through, his belt catching on the hard edge as he squeezed himself through the narrow gap. The corner of the buckle dug into him, a sharp stabbing pain that lingered as he stumbled to his feet and braced himself in the door for Spencer. She passed through like a shadow, a wisp, her coat flapping off her limbs and around her waist. She leapt up the stairs two at a time, barely touching the railing or the steps. The door slammed shut behind her, pitching Ariel up the first stair. He ran behind her, one palm flat against the wall.

He knew it was coming, but he still winced when the sound came. They weren't even halfway up the stairs when it happened, the long wailing scream from deep inside the building. It came from every side, filled the tiny stairwell with an eardrum bursting, brain rattling sound. It echoed inside Ariel's chest, it shook his lungs inside him, choked the air out of him. It couldn't let her get away. It couldn't bear to lose her. Spencer stumbled, and gracelessly Ariel bounced off the wall trying to not run into her. He could hear her screaming through her teeth, a rough guttural sound of rage and pain. She grabbed the railing and started pulling herself up, hand over hand, defiance the only thing keeping her from collapsing. And then, like the exclamation point after the scream, behind them the door exploded off of its hinges. Ariel yelped and pushed himself up against the railing, staring back in stupid impotent terror. The door banged off of the stairs with a crash. The black gunk that had held it closed was burnt, smoking as though it were spent explosives. The door was bent in the middle, and wet with black ichor. Ariel looked up from the door, his eyes roving endlessly, his mind trying to make sense of what he was seeing. The mass in the floor had overtaken the flames, dragged itself over them, devoured them. It had pulled itself free from the floor, a mass of arms and tendrils and hands and bubbling, screaming mouths. Its skin ate the light, a black formless pit from which its appendages burst without warning or sign. It wasn't going to let them go. He thought, staring at its thousand hands grabbing the doorframe, that maybe it knew how perfect it was, too. Maybe there was a mind there, an ego, a pride that they had bruised. It lunged through the doorway, and above their heads the fluorescent lights burst in a shower of sparks. Ariel screamed, turned, and ran. He caught Spencer under her shoulders with one arm, pushing her up the stairs with him. She was coughing again, choking, but she ran. Her hands rang against the metal railing as they made the turn and the staircase doubled back. Behind them in the dark was the wet frenzied slapping of the monster, its thousand limbs spattering as it brought them down on the steps, its bloated body slithering as it dragged itself upwards. Under his feet the stair bucked, shivered like breathing flesh. The air around him was wet and hot, like the inside of a great mouth. The wall and the railing felt soft, hairy, and warm.

The stairwell erupted into light above him – Spencer had found the door to the lobby, the unlocked door, the door the creature hadn't trapped. Suddenly the stairwell was only a stairwell again, a white painted square in the side of a building, but now he saw the walls were black with mold. Spencer skidded on the tile floor of the lobby, her momentum dragging her around as she clung to the door, holding it for him again. He was half blinded by the brightness of the lobby but he could see her eyes were dark, the whites most assuredly not white. Her ears and nose were dripping the same black substance she had been vomiting earlier, but still she held the door, shaking and coughing like a plague victim. Ariel grabbed the doorframe with one blistered hand and yanked himself nearly off his feet, boosting himself through the-

A cold hand caught him around his neck. His skin steamed. Another hand on his bare wrist. Another, thin as a garrote, cut into his forearm. A lump suddenly formed in his throat. Ariel choked. His shoes slipped on the stair. 

He'd always known he'd die like this. Not even deep down, he knew that right on the surface, just below all his day to day thoughts. In between hosting webinars and getting coffee, 'I am going to die horribly'. In between loving Jolene and hating her, 'I am going to die bleeding and alone'. In between sleeping and wakefulness, 'One day it will be my last day, and on that day I hope I'm too drunk to feel it'. He had expected this, knew this. He had been born under a bad sign. It was just science. There wasn't a predictive model he could run that had him come out of this life whole, dying comfortably in his nineties. There wasn't one that had him living past forty-five.

  
  
  


But then, he didn't run predictive models to include Spencer. With one hand still clinging to the door she clawed the air, swiped hard and fast out at him. She caught his shirtfront and bellowed like a bull, and with one mighty yank she dragged him into the light. He felt the cold doorframe under his hand, felt his shoes scrambling for traction on the tile, and in the next second there was a wet horrible pop, like a limb dislocating, and then he was free. Gasping and coughing he fell to the floor, but found his feet in a panicked scramble. He stumbled up, half-dragging himself away from the basement door and towards the front entrance. He couldn't see through his own panic, couldn't feel anything but the instinctual burst of adrenaline coursing through his body. Behind him Spencer staggered back from the door. It hung open, dangled against the wall like a loose tooth. Darkness poured from the stairwell, a black wet nothing filled the doorway, arms and tendrils spreading over the doorframe and onto the walls. Huge hands, black as tar and big as tires clawed at the plaster tiles of the ceiling, scoring them and raining plaster dust down on Spencer's head. The lights gave a weak little flicker and went out, leaving the room in the gentle light of the four tiny frosted glass windows. Four little squares of light, hazy against the tile floor, hovered around Spencer's feet.

Ariel didn't stop running until he was nearly at the front door, didn't remember in his blind haze to look back, to grab her, to do anything but save his own life. He remembered her in the same way he remembered leaving gallons of milk on the roof of his car, that sudden stupid stab of shame pulsed through his chest. He skidded to a stop, his shoulder bumping into the front door with a dull thud. The little windows rattled in their housing, the cloudy squares of light shivered on the floor. His hand clawed at the doorknob.

Spencer was still on her feet, but barely. Her knees were shaking, her skinny legs barely holding her up. Her hands were curled into fierce little fists, her back curved in a pained arc. She was gasping, her breath bubbling audibly. A thick black substance dripped from the corners of her mouth, her nose, her ears. Streams of the stuff poured out of her eyes. She glared at the thing in the door, and though it didn't have eyes Ariel knew the abyss was gazing back. 

“C'mon,” she gurgled. A glob dripped off of her lips. “C'mon!” The thing lashed out, snapping a tendril around her wrist. She pitched forward, but she kept her feet. Something like a dripping hand, fingers long as her legs, reached out from the doorway. There were too many fingers, too many joints, like the legs of a spider arranged all wrong. Spencer pulled away from it, stretching her arm as far as she could. She pulled against the creature, coughing black ichor and blinking the slime out of her eyes. The surface of the thing rippled impatiently.

“C'mon, 'M right here!” She slurred. “Come on, come an' get me!” Another tendril snatched at her coat. She stumbled. She was shaking, barely able to stand. She coughed and it sounded like a sob. She looked up, shaking her blind head. She glanced back to where the stairs were, then in Ariel's direction, just for a second. Her eyes were drowned. He didn't know if she could see him, suspected she couldn't, but he still felt that somehow she was trying to tell him something. The way she moved he wasn't sure if she could even tell where she was anymore. Her face was a wet smear. She kept taunting it, pulling hard against it, muttering and gurgling. Its hands curled around her, a thousand limbs curving out of the wall for her until she was lost in the forest of thin dark tendrils. It slid over the threshold, great wet blobs of itself roiling over onto the ceiling and floor as it crept closer to her, but still it wouldn't leave the stairwell.

“Come out! Come and get me, _ I'm right here _ !” She screamed. “Come and get me!”

Her hand, the one that wasn't caught, shot towards her chest in a ferocious grab. Ariel could hear the chain snap from across the room. Spencer's necklace fell to the ground with a bright ' _ ching _ ', the last shred of her armor stripped away. She choked. Her limbs jerked. Her head lolled back. 

Like a cat the thing tensed, all of its hands and arms stiffened. For a breathless second it hesitated, unsure, hungry but confused. It was old, so very old, and it couldn't have survived without being cautious, but with a twitch and a smug burble of triumph it threw itself out of the stairwell, engulfing Spencer's head and shoulders in its clicking, bubbling bulk. Hands and hairy, armored legs, carapace and something like shimmering wings crackled and spat as they flailed around her. They struck out at her clothes, tendrils sticking like flypaper and spreading over whatever they could touch. Spencer stumbled back under the weight, her hand batting weakly at it even as the creature overwhelmed her mind and her fingers went rigid. Her knees buckled, her body fell, twitching like a dying fish towards the tile.

  
  
  


Every home or space Ariel had ever lived in had been haunted. Every dorm, every apartment, every hotel room. Every single one had been inhabited by some sort of slack-jawed, drooling, ectoplasmic freeloader with a grudge against anything with a pulse. And, he thought as his hand turned the doorknob, this one was no different. It was almost a shame.

Spencer was already halfway to the floor when Ariel opened the front door and the sun came pouring in. The bright shaft of sunlight burst forth from the doorway like a bullet from a gun. The happy morning sun, high in the sky above the skyscrapers to the East shone down with all the smiley glory of a child's drawing. Outside Ariel heard the chirping of birds, the cheerful hum of cars going by, the distant sound of children playing. A white, glowing, beautiful shaft of sunlight cut across the tile floor, a quickly widening line sprung open across the lobby. It was the kind of light that made you feel alive in the morning, made you walk a little slower, smile a little wider. Spencer fell right into it, carrying the creature with her. 

To say it screamed when the light hit it would have been an understatement. The ceiling tiles rattled at the sound, the mailboxes shifted in the wall. Ariel's sinuses felt like they were imploding, his eyes and tongue suddenly felt too big for his skull, but he didn't look away. A cloud of smoke burst off of the creature's surface, deep blue and smelling, again, vaguely of onions. Through the smoke Ariel could see mouths, hands, legs, hair, each flashing and shining across the surface as it struggled to get away from the sunlight, but even as it stuck out a limb it burned, evaporated before his eyes. It peeled away from Spencer's skin like a sunburn, like linoleum on a humid day. It flopped, it flailed, it rolled like a wave, but the more it struggled the thinner it spread itself. Great blisters formed all across its bulk, popping with wet spatters and leaving oozing ragged holes. In seconds it was too damaged to stand, too wounded to move. It fell into the sunbeam, wriggling helplessly across Spencer's back and dripping like spilled oil onto the tile. Its screams turned to wet sobs, to whimpers, and finally to a high whine that rose in pitch as the last pieces fell heavily to the floor. Ariel smiled, raised his free hand, and waved spitefully as the last little chunks of the beast burned away and the sound hissed out of existence. 

Above his head the lights flickered back on with a dull hum. He let the door fall shut.

“Spencer?” He called, jogging back across the floor. She was lying on the tile, bunched up like a pile of laundry. One of her arms was curled around her face. She was covered in a thin layer of translucent material, the last scraps of the creature. They shrank as he watched, forming a scummy layer of filth across both Spencer and the tile she was lying on as the ectoplasm evaporated. Ariel sank down to his knees beside her, his hands hovering over her awkwardly. He couldn't tell if she was breathing, wasn't sure if she was still seizing or unconscious or... or he didn't want to think about what else Spencer might be after taking a monster to the face. He tried her name again and took a nervous glance around the room. No helpful-but-not-at-all-curious person made themselves apparent with a first aid kit or a handy EMT. Ariel put his hand on Spencer's shoulder, then pulled it back. He blinked. He leaned over her and listened. She groaned again.

“Oranges,” she said weakly, rolling onto her side. She snorted hard and spat a glistening wad of ectoplasm out onto the floor. “Why is it always oranges?”

Ariel sighed and relaxed, his body bowing like a tree as he slouched forward. He felt himself smiling, just a little.

“You see, this is why we  _ don't _ talk to ghosts.” He said gently. She snorted at him and called him an ass. So obviously she was feeling better, he thought.

“I can't feel it anymore. What'd you do?” She asked.

“I thought it could use a little sun.”

She laughed, though he doubted it had much to do with his very little joke. If her smile was like the gentler movements of the tectonic plates her laugh was a 9.5 on the Richter Scale, a bitter, rasping disaster that cracked her features and shook her whole body. Just as soon as she started she winced and stopped, curling up a little tighter and grumbling in pain. He saw that her face was red, a layer or two of her skin puckering and peeling off like old paint. There were blisters along her ears and down the sides of her neck. Her hair looked singed, the bleached coils frayed and broken in places. Her eyebrows were thinner, and he realized she was missing her eyelashes.

“It was a good plan,” he said, trying not to fuss over her injuries and puffing up a little. “It was afraid of the sun, so, of course, you just had to make it desperate enough to jump out at you. Once it was in the open, well...”

He managed to smile proudly and shrug humbly in the same motion, an action that should have been impossible.

“Well, if it was stupid enough to act on impulse like that, it wasn't as perfect as I thought.”

Spencer very slowly teetered upright, rocking back and forth as she settled onto her hips. She delicately cracked her neck.

“What?” She groaned flatly. She rubbed her eyes gingerly, careful of her wounded skin. Ariel drew himself up. Poor thing was disoriented.

“Your plan. I'm saying it was a good plan.”

“I had a plan?”

“You...” he faltered. “You looked at the door. And at me. You sort of gave me the high sign. I could tell you were trying to... uh, tell me... something.”

She looked up at him, bare brows dark and furrowed, something like either pity or exasperation all over her face.

“I was blind.”

“Yeah but you...” he frowned and trailed off.

“I'll take the credit.”

“No, no, it was all me now. No takebacks. I'm a genius and you were bait.”

Spencer rasped out another laugh.

“Yeah, whatever.”

Ariel got to his feet and unthinkingly offered her his arm. She stumbled up on her own, holding out her hands to steady herself. When it no longer seemed likely that she was going to fall on her ass, he cleared his throat as casually as possible and asked the question he had been dying to ask:

“So, nothing?”

“Nothing. Not a whimper.”

“Then...” he felt strange muscles working in his face. A hopeful smile formed on his lips. Spencer looked horrified. “Then I'm safe?”

“With your luck? Let's not push it. But the building feels clean. For now.”

“I'll take what I can get.” He thumbed up the stairs. “Aloe? Shower? I think I’ve got an unopened pack of teeshirts or something you can wear.”

Spencer muttered her assent and slowly took the stairwell, leaning on the rail as much as she needed to. Ariel slipped past her to hold whatever doors they might encounter, and in between flights managed to remember where he'd packed away his first aid kit. Up the stairs a door opened, and after a time it shut. The lobby passed into silence, and slowly, eventually, the door to the basement swung painstakingly shut, a little more crooked than it had been before. 

The building was quiet.


End file.
